A SECRET REVEALED

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

God has given me the responsibility of serving His church by proclaiming His entire message to you. This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God’s people. For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing His glory.

Colossians 1:25-27 NLT

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

From the time that God chose the Israelites to be His people, anyone who was not a Jew was on the outside looking in. If they wanted be one of God’s people, they needed to convert to Judaism and accept its laws, doctrines, and sacraments.

In other words, when it came to the Jewish faith, you were either a Jew or a non-Jew, someone referred to as a Gentile.

Now, it should be known that there were many God-believing, God-fearing, and God-worshiping Gentiles in Old Testament days, all this despite other polytheistic belief systems that were more the norm in non-Jewish nations. We know that the temple in Jerusalem had an outer court for Gentiles to gather and pray, a court that was turned into a marketplace during the Passover festival which incensed Jesus as He visited the week of His death. You’ll remember how He overturned the tables of the money changers and merchants, declaring how they had turned a house of prayer into a den of robbers (Matthew 21:12-13).

Despite this Gentile position, excluded from the temple of God and treated as outcasts by Jews in general, God had special plans for them well before those plans were revealed. In other words, God’s plan for the Gentiles was a secret to them, waiting to be revealed in the future. And as we see in our passage today, the Apostle Paul told the Colossian Christians that the secret had been kept by God for “centuries and generations past until He was ready to unveil it.

That unveiling happened through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and it was foretold in the Book of Isaiah:

And now the Lord speaks—the One who formed Me in my mother’s womb to be His servant, who commissioned Me to bring Israel back to Him. The Lord has honored Me, and My God has given Me strength. He says, “You will do more than restore the people of Israel to Me. I will make You a light to the Gentiles, and You will bring My salvation to the ends of the earth.” Isaiah 49:5-6

Jesus, the long awaited Messiah, was not just coming to deliver the Jews but all people. He was going to be a light for all people, indiscriminate over who He would save. All any person needed to do was to believe in Him as Savior in order to share in His glory.

The scriptures are clear that through Jesus, God’s great secret was revealed. Salvation would come to any Gentile who placed their hope in Christ and they were now able to receive His “riches and glory” as their Savior came to abide within them.  

Paul wanted the Colossian believers to know that God had given him the “responsibility of serving His church by proclaiming His entire message”, the good news of God’s saving grace to them through Jesus, the greatest game changer in human history. 

Today, we share with Paul the calling of our God to proclaim salvation through His Son to all people, many of which have never heard the Gospel before. With this, all Christians get the chance to help others come to Jesus and be saved. What a privilege and honor it is to do so, one we should continually give thanks to our Lord for.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com